Enabling customer satisfaction in call center teams: the role of transformational leadership in the service-profit chain

The importance of the effect of work climate and employee attitude on customer satisfaction has attracted the attention of practitioners and researchers, and, hence, lead to the development of the service-profit chain framework. However, companies whose services involve tasks that are not intrinsically motivating and whose performance rewards are scarce face significant challenges motivating customer service teams and, thus, promoting customer satisfaction and organizational performance. We argue that, in such contexts, transformational leadership is an important factor for service management and that it is essential to foster engagement, satisfaction, and performance among service teams. To assess this proposition, we develop and statistically test a causal model with data from 224 teams (3938 employees) from a large call center company in Brazil. Employee performance and customer satisfaction were assessed with objective metrics supplied by the company. The results from structural equation analyses support all hypotheses in the study. Implications for service companies are addressed.